Song:My True Story
Album:The Doo Wop Box
The 1961 hit My True Story was the one big hit for The Jive Five. But this was a doo wop group that attempted to adjust to changing musical trends so they never really went away. The leader of The Jive Five was Eugene Pitt (born Nov. 6, 1937 in Brooklyn, NY). He was involved in several doo wop groups including The Genies. But Pitt was in an earlier version of that group and was not on their 1959 hit Who's That Knocking. He formed The Jive Five in 1959 with Jerome Hanna, Richard Harris, Thurmon Prophet & Norman Johnson. They hit the jackpot with the 1961 hit My True Story. It was #1 on the R & B singles chart and #3 on the pop singles chart. Hanna died in 1962 and after a couple of unsuccessful singles, Pitt reinvented The Jive Five as a soul group and signed with United Artists in 1965. They had a minor hit with I'm A Happy Man and then switched to Musicor Records in 1966. They moved to Decca in 1970 and changed their name to The Jyve Fyve. Pitt again tried to reinvent the group in 1975 as Ebony, Ivory & The Jades and recorded unsuccessfully for Columbia. Pitt reformed The Jive Five in 1982 and recorded a couple of albums for Marty Pekar's doo wop revival label Ambient Sound. The Jive Five also recorded the doo wop themes used on the Nickolodeon TV network. Eugene Pitt still leads a version of The Jive Five today. But you can get the original 1961 My True Story on the Rhino 4CD box set The Doo Wop Box. Here's The Jive Five performing My True Story on PBS Soundstage 1982.
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